Category Archives: Free speech

Breitbart on military religious freedom: fact and fiction

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Military religious freedom: Mikey Weinstein

Mikey Weinstein (CCL truthout.org)

Mikey Weinstein bears considerable watching.

Breitbart set the conservative blogosphere buzzing last Sunday with a claim that Weinstein, founder and president of the virulent Military Religious Freedom Foundation, had been hired by the Pentagon as a consultant. Then on Wednesday Breitbart ramped up the rhetoric with this sure-to-generate-page-views headline, “Pentagon May Court Martial Soldiers Who Share Christian Faith.”

But I can find no evidence of any ongoing professional relationship. And so far all the Pentagon has done is to reiterate a decades-old policy against coercive proselytizing.

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The media and the Bill of Rights

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The media: man sawing off branch he's sitting on

Journalists began calling for more limits on the Second Amendment immediately after the Newtown shootings last December. According to the Media Research Center, in the month that followed, ABC, CBS and NBC broadcast 216 gun policy stories on their evening news and morning shows.

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TriMet and our fear of free speech

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Free speech: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.

Poor TriMet. Being forced against their will to permit free speech.

Oh, the Portland, Oregon, public transit agency supports free speech. I know because they said so. They just desperately want for it to happen some place else. Because, you know, free speech can get messy. Just like democracy. And God forbid that life should get messy for the good folks at TriMet. (Well, any messier than it already is.)

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Youcef Nadarkhani released, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah imprisoned

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Mohammad Ali Dadkhah: Nadarkhani being greeted by sons outside prison

(Facebook)

By now you’ve probably heard. Youcef Nadarkhani (about whom I’ve blogged several times, including here, here and here) was released from prison four weeks ago.

After a six-hour hearing, he was acquitted of the capital charge of apostasy, convicted instead of evangelizing Muslims, and sentenced to three years in prison. He was then released on time served. (Nadarkhani was originally arrested in October, 2009, for protesting the government’s decision to force all children, including his, to study the Quran in school.)

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Iranian government didn’t let the grass grow under their feet. Nadarkhani’s attorney, renowned human rights lawyer Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, was arrested last week.

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The media and “the most dangerous time in our political history”

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The media: Pat Caddell headshot

Pat Caddell (CCL Gage Skidmore)

According to a new Gallup poll last month, 60% of Americans now have “little or no trust” in the media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly.”

But yellow journalism is hardly a 21st-century phenomenon. And the internet allows us to just bypass the mainstream media altogether. So, while media bias is an annoyance, it’s hardly the worst problem confronting us these days.

Right?

Not so fast, says political pollster and consultant Pat Caddell.

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Freedom of speech: Obama, meet Brandeis

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Freedom of speech: text of the First Amendment carved in granite block

(CCL dcwriterdawn)

It’s no surprise that the Muslim world wants to limit our freedom of speech. What’s deeply disturbing is that the Administration apparently does as well.

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Sharpsburg: The past is still much with us

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Sharpsburg: bodies in the Sunken Road

Sunken Road, Sharpsburg (Alexander Gardner, Library of Congress)

When it comes to pivotal battles of the Civil War, Gettysburg gets most of the press. But before Gettysburg, there was Sharpsburg.

That’s if you’re from the South–which I am. If you’re from the North, it’s Antietam. (Confederate General D. H. Hill once suggested that Confederate farmer boys tended to be impressed by towns and other human-made things; Union city boys, by some natural landmark. For whatever reason, well over a dozen Civil War battles have dual names. This battle was fought just east of Sharpsburg, Maryland, by Antietam Creek.)

Monday was the 150th anniversary of the battle. Over 23,000 men were killed or wounded in twelve hours on September 17th, 1862, making it the bloodiest day in American history.

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